


Whiskey and Honey

by BettyBiscay



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, just an old country cough medicine, no alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:52:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5381066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyBiscay/pseuds/BettyBiscay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse into the sickness that surrounds Steve Roger's life, and the Irish remedy that makes it a little easier to bear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskey and Honey

Steven Rogers is seven and has a cough that rattles his lungs, his bones, the very windows in the cramped tenement he and his mother share. Sarah Rogers came from the old country with little in her purse and has even littler now that her son has an illness he can’t shake no matter what expensive medicines the doctor advises. An old woman cramped below deck with her on the passage from Ireland warned that the trip would make a seasick infant grow up permanently sickly. Sarah Rogers laughed at the crone’s superstition- she had an immigrant’s optimism then. Now Sarah presses a hand to her son’s fevered forehead and keeps her mouth in a tight, unsmiling line.

  
On the stove, a kettle shrieks and little Steven flinches in his sleep. From a cabinet with peeling white paint Sarah pulls a bottle of stout whiskey, a small jar of honey, and a tin of pepper, and mixes the lot with boiling water. She sets a mug on the small table next to her son’s bed and kisses his clammy hand. During her long shift at the hospital she fingers a rosary in her pocket and prays he’s still alive when she comes home.

 

 

Steven Rogers is sixteen and cut class to visit Bucky Barnes, who’s been home sick with the flu for three days. Steve painstakingly climbs up the fire escape to the bedroom Bucky shares with his sister Rachel and nearly falls off laughing at the look on Buck’s face.

  
“What’re you trying to do, break your neck?” Bucky rasps after Steve lets himself in.

  
“Better than listening to old lady Matlock,” Steve retorts “Anyway I figured you could use some company. I brought you something,” Steve proudly pulls a murky jar from his pocket, and Bucky groans.

  
“Not that goop your ma makes, I’d rather take my chances with this lung rot.”

  
“Be grateful I didn’t bring your homework.”

  
Steve unscrews the jar and thrusts it under Bucky’s nose. With a grimace, Bucky takes the concoction. The rest of the afternoon Bucky hardly coughs at all, and Steve is insufferably smug.

 

 

Steven Rogers is nineteen and uncomfortably tagging along on a double date with Bucky and two brunettes that both seem to be under the impression they’re with Bucky. They’re at a cinema downtown and he seems to miss the shared popcorn every time it’s passed.

  
One of the girls, Norma, pulls a flask from her purse and offers it to Bucky. He takes a swig and coughs. He leaned over Steve’s supposed date, Sylvia, and whispers with a grin, “Whiskey just don’t taste as good when it makes me think of your mama and her Irish remedies.”

  

The next month Steven Rogers is nineteen and a half and burying his mother, whose cough wouldn’t go away.

 

 

Steven Rogers is twenty-three and given the chance of a lifetime. He’s brought to Camp Lehigh and told to run and run and run until he feels like he’ll never catch his breath. In the cabin he shares with fifteen other men he’s pushed around and tripped, the object of the same pranks his classmates pulled in grade school. As two weeks pass more and more of them pack up their kits while he stays, and he can’t puzzle out why.

  
The evening after jumping on a grenade, Steve's bunkmate, Moore, is dismissed for running a fever. He sneezes twice on Steve out of spite, and the following morning Steve can feel a familiar tug in his chest. He swallows the coughs that try to spill from him until he feels like his face has gone purple from the effort. Shame pools in his belly when he looks up at mess and finds Agent Carter looking at him appraisingly. He tries to focus on bolting down the rest of his meal.

A minute later a chipped mug slides onto his tray, and Agent Carter nonchalantly leaves a trail of perfume in her wake past his table. Steve’s face is flushed and his chest is warm for the rest of the day, but it isn’t because of the strong whiskey in his tea.

 

 

Steven Rogers is twenty-four and hunkered behind enemy lines. Dugan has declared it to be “cold as tits”, and three of the Commandos have colds. They’re staking out a Hydra facility, but Falsworth declares their cover will be blown if Morita won’t stop sniffling.

  
“Christ, you didn’t hear us complain this much after he ate that whole tin of beans in Italy- Jesus you’d think the Germans would’ve been able to sniff us out,” Morita earns himself a kick in the leg, and Dugan’s laugh quickly devolves into a hacking cough.

  
“Don’t say I never did nothing for you,” Bucky tosses a flask at Dugan and fires a single shot into the head of a Hydra scientist before sneezing.

  

Three weeks later Steven Rogers is twenty-four and sitting alone in the bombed out remains of a bar, wishing the whiskey he drank would burn away the vice grip of pain and anger choking him.

 

 

Steven Rogers is twenty-five and has been for a very long time. Propped up in a bed across from him is Peggy Carter, warped and weathered with time that he spent sleeping. She coughs a nasty wet cough, but waves a dismissive hand at his concern.

  
“I suppose smoking always was a terrible habit, wasn’t it,” She sighs, and presses a hand to her chest, trying to repress another fit.

  
Vivid flashes of memories from a lifetime ago- mere months ago to him- hit Steve all at once. Peggy in the war room with Phillips, both puffing and strategizing in a haze of smoke. Peggy seated at her desk, a forgotten cigarette burning low in an ashtray as she scribbles notes in reports. Peggy with a cigarette dangling between her fingers, the imprint of her carmine lips left on the filter giving Steve a most impudent idea of where else he’d like to see her lipstick smudged.

  
Another loud cough rips Steve into the present. He stands, suddenly hot and claustrophobic, searching for something to distract himself. He moves for the water pitcher, but Peggy interrupts him.

  
“Darling,” _Darling_ , an echoed voice whispers in his head, twisting his heart painfully, “don’t let’s bother with that, I haven’t need give up all my vices.”  
In the nightstand next to her bed Peggy Carter keeps a small flask with delicately engraved initials, and she and Steve take turns sipping from it until a nurse discovers them.

 

 

Steven Rogers is twenty-six and sits alone at a bar in his old dress blues. A crumpled funeral program rests under his hat, and he turns a glass of whiskey in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a nasty cold for the past few days, and tonight I finally whipped up the cough medicine my great grandmother swore by, hot water, honey, lemon, pepper, and whiskey. Naturally, rather than getting into bed and relaxing, I decided to spend the next two hours neglecting my drink and writing this little ficlet.


End file.
